The line you cannot cross

Google publishes review policies for its Maps and Business Profile content, reachable from the help links inside any Business Profile. Read them yourself rather than trusting a summary on a page you found, and read them today, before you sell anything. What follows is the short version as of the checked date on this course. It is not legal advice.

A discount, a free drink, a loyalty stamp, a raffle entry, a tip, or anything else of value in exchange for a review is not allowed. Adding the words honest review does not fix it. Neither does the customer being pleased anyway.

A discount sign next to the card is the obvious idea, so expect an owner to propose it in front of you. Nod along and you have designed a policy violation into their counter. Have the answer ready: you can ask, you cannot pay.

Review gating is catching the customer first, asking privately how it went, then sending the happy ones to Google and routing the unhappy ones to a private complaint form. It is against the policy, and it wears friendlier names: feedback funnel, smart routing, a quick check before we send them.

If a pitch you are copying has a step that decides who reaches Google, that step is gating, whatever it is called.

Who. Not what you say, not how you ask, not the design of the card. Who gets asked: everyone, or only the ones you already know are pleased. Ask everyone and you are inside the line. Sort them first and you are outside it, no matter how the landing page is worded.

• No writing reviews yourself. No staff or family posting as customers.
• No buying them, and no taking a job where that is the real ask dressed up as marketing.
• In the United States the Federal Trade Commission also has a rule covering fake and paid reviews and testimonials. Look it up on ftc.gov before anybody hands you money.

Take your own advice outside the US too: the platform rule and the consumer-protection rule are two separate things, and you stand under both.

Your entire pipeline is owners talking to other owners in one town. A shop that gets reviews stripped after buying your system is not one lost customer, it is a story that travels a street faster than you can walk it.

And the honest version sells better. Anyone can print a QR code. Explaining the line, unprompted, in the first two minutes is a real difference and it is free.

• Make the ask take ten seconds instead of a minute. That is the card.
• Make asking a habit, not a decision: a card at every station, one sentence the staff know by heart.
• Ask in person, right after the work, by someone whose name the customer knows.
• Ask everybody, including the ones you are unsure about. That is the whole difference.
• Teach the owner to reply to reviews, good and bad. It is theirs to do, it is allowed, and most are not doing it.

An owner will ask, in a friendly voice, whether you can make sure the bad ones do not go up. Do not improvise. Say something close to: I cannot build that. Filtering who gets asked is against Google's policy, and it is your profile that takes the hit, not mine. What I can do is make it easy to ask everyone, right at the end, while they are still standing here.

Then stop talking. Some buy anyway. A few will not, and you will walk out having turned down money.